Popular stick-figure webcomic / THU 12-11-25 / Art class staple / Cable staple since 1972 / Landing area in a long jump / Sign for cheap admission / New Zealand parrot whose name sounds like a Korean automaker / 2002 book paying tribute to a 1960s rock legend

Constructor: Kevin Curry

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "What do I have to do to solve this clue?" — theme clues are lists of items separated by ellipses; answers are what you, the solver, have to do in order to understand each list:

Theme answers:

• DREAM TEAMS (17A: SEAL ... SWAT ... B ...)
• PICTURE PERFECT (28A: Utopia ... 10 ... ideal ...)
• IMAGINE DRAGONS (45A: Puff ... Komodo ... Smaug ...)
• THINK TANKS (61A: Fish ... scuba ... Army ...)

Word of the Day: IMAGINE DRAGONS (45A) —

Imagine Dragons are an American pop rock band formed in 2008, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. The band currently consists of lead singer Dan Reynolds, guitarist Wayne Sermon, and bassist Ben McKee. They first gained exposure with the release of their single "It's Time", followed by their debut album Night Visions (2012), which resulted in the chart-topping singles "Radioactive" and "Demons". Rolling Stone named "Radioactive", which held the record for most weeks charted on the Billboard Hot 100, the "biggest rock hit of the year". MTV called them "the year's biggest breakout band", and Billboard named them their "Breakthrough Band of 2013" and "Biggest Band of 2017", and placed them at the top of their "Year in Rock" rankings for 2013, 2017, and 2018. Imagine Dragons topped the Billboard Year-End "Top Artists – Duo/Group" category in 2018. [...] Imagine Dragons have sold more than 74 million albums and 65 million digital songs worldwide, making them one of the world's best-selling music artists. They have also earned 160 billion streams across music platforms. They were the most streamed group of 2018 on Spotify, the first rock act to have four songs, "Radioactive", "Demons", "Believer", and "Thunder", to surpass one billion streams each, and the only group in RIAA history to have four songs certified higher than Diamond. According to Billboard, "Believer", "Thunder", and "Radioactive" were the three best performing rock songs of the 2010s.

• • •

There are a lot of things I do when I solve: "dream" is not one of them. The other opening verbs are all defensible, in terms of describing solver (i.e. my) activity, but "dream," absolutely not. It's possible I have totally misunderstood the theme and somehow "dream" works perfectly for some unifying concept I have yet to ... imagine. But right now, "dream" is superbad, and not in a good way. In a bad way. The other themers get better as they go along, in terms of instructions to the solver (i.e. me) as to how to make sense of the various lists. But I still can't say I think much of this theme—it really seems like the kind of theme that could use a revealer. I don't mind inferring a theme now and then, esp. on a Thursday (the allegedly trickiest of days), but this one could've used some kind of payoff. But I think the thing that's *really* bugging me is "dream." Still hung up on that outlier. Too bad CONSIDER or ENVISION don't occur at the front of any familiar phrases. They beat "dream" silly in terms of describing solver brain activity.

Another problem with this puzzle was it was way, way too easy. No resistance anywhere except the themers. Well, not *no* resistance. I had a weirdly hard time getting the center Downs in this puzzle at first pass. I'm sure PAPER is a staple of art class, but it's such a general, non-art-specific word that it never occurred to me (32D: Art class staple). I have no idea what kind of "art" we're dealing with. I assumed painting and wrote in the crosswordiest five-letter answer I could think of: EASEL. Getting to ENDED (?) from [Quit] was also not straightforward. I wouldn't swap those two words out very often, though I can see (if I squint) how one might. "I quit my job" (sure), "I ENDED my job" (what?). "I quit smoking" (great!), "I ENDED smoking" (what, like on the whole planet?). Didn't quite line up in my ear, those two. As for RINSE, it was the first thing I wanted, but I didn't trust it at all because ...well, the clue is written so weirdly. 30D: Hand sanitizer eliminates the need to do this ... it's odd. It kind of suggests that if you have wet hands (and thus have a "need" to RINSE), you can just use hand sanitizer and then you won't have that need. I mean, if you have a need to RINSE, you have a need to RINSE, and hand sanitizer does not "eliminate" that. Hand sanitizer doesn't supplant "rinsing," it supplants washing. I know what the clue means, but the phrasing is really awkward to my ear. So I definitely thought of RINSE but didn't trust it, especially since I couldn't get the adjacent 5s to work. But then NINA was a cinch (35A: Columbus's smallest ship) and eventually SANDPIT became obvious (38A: Landing area in a long jump) and this "problem" area wasn't really much of a "problem" after all.

The puzzle did have one winning element, and that's the stunning POPEMOBILE / "I GOT A WOMAN" pairing. Two great answers that create a deeply pleasing mental picture—the pope cruising along blasting Ray Charles out his windows. "I GOT A WOMAN" is a great song—the kind of song that's so great, you find yourself happily singing along to completely misogynist lyrics. Too catchy to resist. Just ignore that "woman's place is in the home" part, you'll be fine!:

She's there to love me
Both day and night
Never grumbles or fusses
Always treats me right
Never running in the streets
Leaving me alone
She knows a woman's place

Is right there now in her home 

One little problem, though. The actual title of the song appears to be "I'VE GOT A WOMAN"

Seems like a significant error on the NYTXW's part. But I love the song too much to get into it. Oh, wait, according to wikipedia, the title is "I GOT A WOMAN," but it was "originally titled" "I'VE GOT A WOMAN." Not sure why it changed. Again, don't really care. Just loving the song.

I wonder how much of the NYTXW's core audience is familiar with IMAGINE DRAGONS. Extremely popular band, by the usual metrics, and yet ... I'm not sure about the cultural penetration of that band to demographics older than millennials. I mean, I've known who they are for a long time, but I don't know them. Like, I could name one song, and I hear them precisely never. Pop radio just doesn't SEEP into everyone's lives the way it feels like it did decades ago. The ensiloing effect of extreme personalization. We don't experience culture that's not "ours" because we don't have to. I expect some sizable contingent of older solvers to have no idea who they are, in a way that a similar contingent of older solvers 50 years ago would not have been able to avoid knowing who, say, the Beatles or the Stones or even the Doors were. Anyway, IMAGINE DRAGONS is not really my thing, but their name now makes me laugh because it makes me think of this very funny Spotify Wrapped bit by comedian Josh Johnson:

["I looked at the data, and you've been listening to a lot of IMAGINE DRAGONS"]

Bullets:

• 5A: Greek goddess swallowed by her father and rescued by her future husband (HERA) — they left off "... who is also her brother."
• 40A: Sign for cheap admission (SRO) — short for Sit Right Overthere. Or Slash-Rate Opera, I forget which.*
• 48A: Take inspiration from (OWE TO) — not feeling this one at all. Being indebted to and being inspired by are different things. Nearly every other clue for OWE TO in NYTXW history has understood this. But then in 2024 people started trying to be "original" at the cost of clarity and accuracy, and now here we are. Look, OWETO is not good fill, so don't give solvers any reason to dwell on it. Clue it the boring old way so people can move on to better things.

• 62D: New Zealand parrot whose name sounds like a Korean automaker (KEA) — just [New Zealand parrot] is fine. Everyone should know about the KEA, the amazing bird that saves us from having every KEA clue be [Mauna ___]. Precisely the kind of crosswordese I can get behind. More KEA I say, and none of this condescending "sounds like" baloney in the clue. Let the KEA soar free!

[Trash parrot!]

And now it's time for 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲, and boy do I have a lot of them. We'll see if I can get through all your submissions by the end of the year. Tall order. Here we go.

First up we've got Mary, with a Christmas past / Christmas future set. I'm just gonna give you her note in its entirety:

I need to send 2 photos this year. From 2022, my husband Dale wearing his red Christmas shirt and reading the paper with Henry on his lap. I lost them both this year – Dale to dementia and Henry soon after. After my granddaughter rescued 2 kittens that had been abandoned in an open pet carrier they became my early Christmas present. Pepper and Curry are delightful companions and add some spice to my life!

[sweet newspaper lectern baby!]

[why won't my cats do this?]
[Thanks, Mary!]

Next we have Rudy, who decided to dress up as Santa, and Leo, who thinks the belt is all wrong

[RIP Leo, who died just last week]
[Thanks, Ted!]

Here's Beezus the red-nosed reindeer ... enduring the season ("Shockingly compliant"). 

[how could the other reindeer be mean to this sweet baby!?]
[Thanks, Heather!]

Kiwi here got his "holidays" confused, but we're gonna let him in anyway. Here's Kiwi sitting beneath his killer cat-bat balloon. That's Halloween, sweetheart. Or maybe that's just what Santa looks like in Kiwi's mind, who knows?

[Killer Cat-Bat is gonna find out if you've been naughty or nice and brother let me tell you you better hope the answer ain't "naughty"]
[Thanks, Paula!]

And finally today, Bianca. She sees you when you're sleeping. She sees you watching Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe. She sees you regifting that ugly sweater. She sees you.

[Thanks, David]

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*actually, Standing Room Only  

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Secret identity of Don Diego de la Vega / WED 12-10-25 / Final boss in the game God of War / Rapper who co-starred in 1994's "Above the Rim" / Several things in a pagoda / Ax, so to speak / First name in daring jumps / Iconic repeated Keanu Reeves role / "Community" character played by Donald Glover / Performer of the 1992 dance song "Supermodel (You Better Work)"

Constructor: Kareem Ayas

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: UNDER REPAIR (28D: Status of 23-, 44- and 69-Across, as indicated by their clues and placement in the grid) — the answers are things that are UNDER REPAIR in two senses: they are in need of fixing (indicated by their warning sign-like clues), and they are under a pair of "RE"s (in shaded squares):

Theme answers:

• PRERECORDED (19A: Like voice mail messages, for example)
•  PRINTER (23A: OUT OF ORDER! 🚫🚫🚫 PAPER TRAY REQUIRES MAINTENANCE!)

•  NATURERESERVE (42A: Protected lands for plants and animals)
• ESCALATOR (44A: OUT OF ORDER! 🚫🚫🚫 USE STAIRS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE!)

• ROSESARERED (63A: Love poem opener)
•      TOILET (69A: OUT OF ORDER! 🚫🚫🚫 USE SECOND-FLOOR BATHROOM INSTEAD!

Word of the Day: pagoda (34D: Several things in a pagoda => TIERS) —

A pagoda is a tiered tower with multiple eaves, common in Tibet, Thailand, Cambodia, Nepal, India, China, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, and other parts of Asia. Most pagodas were built to have a religious function, most often Buddhist, but sometimes Taoist or Hindu, and were often in or near viharas. The pagoda traces its origins to the stupa, while its design was developed in ancient India.^[1] Chinese pagodas (Chinese: 塔; pinyin: Tǎ) are a traditional part of Chinese architecture. In addition to religious use, since ancient times Chinese pagodas have been valued for the spectacular views they offer, and many classical poems attest to the joy of scaling pagodas. (wikipedia)

• • •

That was a long way to go for that revealer joke. For me, too long. I can admire the construction of this puzzle while also being frank about the fact that most of the solve was not very enjoyable to me, both because the fill was generally below average (not surprising given the structural demands of the theme), and because staring at RERE after RERE without having any idea why was just unpleasant. Shaded nonsense ... not my idea of a good time. Yes, the revealer explains the RERE perfectly well. But a pair of "RE"s, as a visual element, is just plain ugly to my eyes. The first RERE made me think I had a mistake ("why would you put gibberish like that in shaded squares?"). The second RERE made me realize the first RERE was right and the puzzle was just doing some mysterious, elaborate bit. The second RERE also made the third RERE self-evident—I just filled those remaining shaded squares in and the whole answer there was instantly clear:

So I solved this exactly as it was designed to be solved—all the RERE business and then ... the Big Reveal! I was grateful for that revealer—the whole puzzle is dependent on it, as there is nearly no pleasure to be had before it or without it. So, your enjoyment of this puzzle will probably ride on how much of a pleasure burst you got from the revealer. For me, it merely explained what was going on and pulled the puzzle back from "bad" to "just fine." I don't know that the rickety build-up was worth the finale. But I do think it's a creative and ambitious theme. Ambivalence! That's the real word of the day.

The fill started creaking real early, with the resurrected corpse of EVEL Knievel jumping into the grid right up top and the resurrected corpse of PEI joining him soon after—two crosswordese icons of yore, linked together by ... EVENER 🙁 I'm pretty sure I uttered many actual UHS today (including when I got the answer UHS). There's just a giant angry swirl of green ink on my puzzle print-out around the entire section that extends above and below RICE PADDY. The ugliness arguably stretches all the way to the bottom of the grid (down where ARLO DTS URSA live), but it's densest there around RICE PADDY, with ATMS MCS SEEDER DOER AVEC PROSIT SRI congealing into an unappetizing mass. As I said above, I know why the theme buckles like this—you don't have three themers today, you have six, and they come as conjoined pairs, and that much fixed theme material would be very, very hard to build a clean grid around. You too would find yourself resorting to clumps of ECO CFO NSFW and the like. The puzzle does manage to get off a couple of longer colorful answers, specifically RUPAUL strutting with VEGGIE BACON (PETA would be so happy). But overall, wading through this puzzle was often somewhat tedious (if not particularly difficult).

[Performer of the 1992 dance song "Supermodel (You Better Work)"]

I had trouble primarily with small stuff today. Stuff like END, what the hell is with that clue? (12D: Ax, so to speak). Is this like a program that you "END"—so "END" as in "cut"? And "Ax" as in "cut"? Is that it? OK. Not natural synonyms to my ear, but defensible, I guess. I thought the thunderbolt wielder was THOR (11A: Thunder bolt wielder => ZEUS). I forgot that the [Secret identity of Don Diego de la Vega] was ZORRO and thought maybe EL CID. I was convinced that Donald Glover played a TREY on Community (58D: "Community" character played by Donald Glover), which made the TOILET hard to find for a bit. No idea if the N.F.L. linemen were DTS (defensive tackles) or DES (defensive ends) (although DES is never clued that way, which I should've realized). Forgot there was a Matrix character called ORACLE. Two Matrix characters in this grid why?? There was a niche-iness to the pop culture answers that grated a little. Community character, "final boss" of some video game, multiple Matrix characters ... none of these had to be pop culturey at all. I think once or twice you can steer regular words and phrases into pop cultural territory if that floats your boat, but doing it again and again = 🚫🚫🚫.

Bullets:

• 29D: Trampoline mats (BEDS) — as with END, I just stared at this answer wondering "really?" Are the mats beside the trampoline? For when you ... dismount? Or in case you fall off. Because I've never seen a mat *on* a trampoline. This illustration says the thing you actually jump on is called a "jumping mat"—is that the BED? Words can't express how uninterested I am in trampolines.

• 33A: Green dispensaries? (ATMS) — I think this wants to be a (marijuana) dispensary joke, but if ATMS wants to hide from me, it's going to have to do a way better job than this.
• 34D: Several things in a pagoda (TIERS) — big vocabulary fail today. I looked at "pagoda" and all I could see in my mind's eye was one of those wooden structures ... you see them in backyards and parks ... open on the sides, covered, maybe domed? ... eventually I realized that my brain was stuck somewhere between "pergola" and "gazebo" (the latter of which was the more elusive of the pair—I literally googled "small covered structure in garden or park" in order to jog "gazebo" loose from my brain, ugh. Anyway, most gardens and parks don't have pagodas.

[not a pagoda]

• 56A: Hole in the wall (RAT TRAP) — "Hole in the wall" suggests somewhere out of the way, undiscovered. "A small, very modest, often out-of-the-way place," says American Heritage Dictionary. Nothing in there about ****ing rats!? RAT TRAP is intensively negative in a way that "Hole in the wall" just isn't. I might eat at a hole in the wall. A RAT TRAP ... probably not.

That's all. See you next time. Remember, my annual 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲 extravaganza starts tomorrow, so if you want your pet to be part of the parade (which will likely extend into the new year), get that photo to me today (rexparker at icloud dot com). Many of the photos are memorial photos, which adds to the poignancy of the whole endeavor. Please feel free to send me holiday pics of your recently deceased buddies. Like Miley here, who died just after the holidays last year. What a sweetie. I miss her and I didn't even know her. 

[Thanks, Michael and Lisa!]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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